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"Kevin Rudd, I think, should recognise this is a serious matter and not one for political point scoring."

He believed the situation was a long way from the possibility of war.

"We are at the moment using all diplomatic efforts to ensure that we never get to that point because the results of any war, especially if initiated by North Korea, are too terrible to think about," he said.

Rudd and his successor Tony Abbott have called for Australia to obtain a missile defence shield, similar to America's THAAD system.

Pyne dismissed that as "patently absurd".

It would cost tens of billions of dollars, take years to build and would be useless against the intercontinental, long-range missiles that were the only likely possibility of hitting Australia, he said.

Crossbench senator Nick Xenophon said the ANZUS treaty was not about giving the US a blank cheque.

"It's about being partners in a very difficult situation," he told reporters in Canberra.

Australia's war powers needed to be amended to give Parliament greater scrutiny of overseas deployments.